Facebook's newest frontier: inside the car

At restaurants, at movies and at the office, checking Facebook has become a regular habit for many of the Internet social network's more than 800 million users.

Now that habit has reached a new frontier: the automobile.

Mercedes-Benz USA is bringing Facebook to its cars, with a special version of the service that is built-in to a new in-vehicle telematics system that will be unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.

Accessing Facebook on the road is not the exactly the same as using the social network on a personal computer or a smartphone. The version of Facebook offered in Daimler AG's Mercedes is stripped down to a limited set of features, specially designed for drivers and centered around the locations of friends and businesses.

But according to Facebook vice president of partnerships and platform marketing Dan Rose, the Mercedes version of Facebook reflects the social networking service's expansion to a growing list of settings where screens and Internet connections are available.

"Now that cars have screens that are intelligent, you would expect that more and more car manufacturers will want to make those screens capable of allowing people to connect with their friends and take advantage of the social context that comes along with that," Rose said in an interview.

"One of the core things that people do on their screens in the car is GPS navigation and the ability to see which of your friends are nearby is something we think will be really interesting for people."

He noted Facebook is also increasingly being integrated into televisions, with various TV manufacturers expected to showcase built-in Facebook integration at CES. DirectTV will show off a new social TV app with Facebook capabilities at CES, allowing people to share what they are watching and to add commentary.

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